


Who Watches the Watchword?

by taispeantas_laethuil



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: BDSM, Dorian Pavus' Shitty Past, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/pseuds/taispeantas_laethuil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian knows better than to put his trust in things like watchwords or lovers or people by now. It's just that, seeing as he has declined to become a hermit, he sometimes has to fake being gullible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Watches the Watchword?

**Author's Note:**

> See the end notes for a the prompt which inspired this fic, which will give you a clearer idea of what triggers there might be in this fic.

When the Bull first brought it up, he nearly walked out of the room. His experiences with the watchwords tended towards the uncomfortable and beyond uncomfortable: this _whatever_ he was doing with the Bull for three nights running now was already far too... taboo, for lack of a less offensive word. He was already outside of his comfort zone, being fucked by a Qunari like the act would never catch up with him, like the Bull wasn't bigger and _stranger_ than any man Dorian had ever been with before. Add in any of the bedroom games that had normally followed such a speech and the whole thing became rather terrifying.  
  
But.  
  
But the Bull was always gentle afterwards, always _nice_ even. And the Chargers had softened to him a little, he thought- Krem was almost civil, and so many of the Inquisition's soldiers looked up to them, would take their cues from them...  
  
He just was so _tired_ of being the evil magister from Tevinter.  
  
It wasn't like he wasn't using the Bull. It was to be expected that he be used in return.  
  
So, he could walk out. He could put an end to things right now, and let everything go back to the way it had been. Or he could resign himself to some discomfort in his future and allow things to progress.  
  
"Dorian?" He wished the Bull wouldn't look so concerned. It would be much easier to keep his guard up if the Bull wouldn't pretend to care about his well-being. If the Bull didn't have a lifetime's worth of habits leftover from being Hissrad, the Ben-Hassrath liar. He had to wonder, sometimes, how often the Bull looked at him and saw a potential enemy. It must be more often than Dorian did, surely: he'd actually fought in their peoples' war, after all.  
  
"Yes, I understand," Dorian said with a barely-suppressed eye roll. "My watchword is katoh."  
  
It was a Qunlat word. He wondered what it meant, but didn't bother to ask. The Bull's words were no more trustworthy than his face.

* * *

 

The thing was, the Bull was annoyingly, horrendously, chillingly good at making Dorian lower his guard. There were nights where he seemed to want nothing more than to make Dorian come so often he started ejaculating brain matter, his own release so far distant a concern that Dorian wasn't entirely sure he'd come. There were nights where he wanted to be Dorian's protector, wanted Dorian to relax and just let go. There was a good two week period where he'd seemingly made it his mission in life to make Dorian come on a full belly laugh. When it came to the rougher end of things, he wasn't cruel, nor uncaring. He explained what was going to happen before he did anything. When Dorian said 'no' or 'stop' or 'I can't' he slowed down and gentled and sometimes merely sat perfectly still until Dorian nodded at him to get it over with.  
  
He played Dorian's body like a virtuoso, as much a savant with it as Sera was with her bow. Rope burns, bruises, scratches and lovebites would decorate Dorian's skin beneath his clothes, and every so often the Bull would catch him tracing them and merely smile, like it was a cherished secret between the two of them despite his loud declarations about their activities to the entirety of the Inquisition.  
  
Just about the only thing he did that reminded Dorian that he shouldn't expect things to stay so pleasant was to confirm the watchword. That reminded him that this was only a temporary state of affairs. Sooner rather than later, the Bull would want something from him he didn't particularly want to give, would bulldoze over 'no' and 'stop' and 'I can't', and 'katoh' was sure to be ignored in the much the same manner. Sooner rather than later it wouldn't just be pain, but hurt that the Bull would inflict upon him, and the illusion of power he'd been so careful to build up for Dorian would shatter. The only way to protect himself was to never buy into the illusion in the first place.  
  
It would happen, sooner rather than later. He knew that. He hoped that. It would be easier, to just get it over with. It was an unconscionable risk, trusting the Bull, _liking_ him, even, but he felt the pull in that direction every time their assignations left him feeling lighter and sated instead of used.  
  
He'd spent the whole night with the Bull thrice now, sleeping tucked against his side like a swaddled babe. The Bull hadn't asked him to (Maker be praised, he wasn't sure he could say no to it if he actually asked that of Dorian) but he hadn't objected either.  
  
Quite the opposite, in fact. He'd gotten blow-jobs in the morning after.  
  
This couldn't continue indefinitely. Sooner rather than later, something was bound to give.

* * *

 

And then it happened.  
  
It was their first time playing arvaraad and bas saarebas, and though they weren’t, physically speaking, doing anything that they hadn’t done multiple times before, it felt different. He felt different, at any rate: the Bull appeared to be having the time of his life.  
  
Too much fun to slow down when Dorian asked him to stop, it seemed. If anything, he sped up, treated him more roughly, until Dorian was biting down on his lip to keep all other harmful pleadings in.  
  
Still as much as the situation wasn’t ideal, he was managing. This wasn’t unexpected, it was more or less exactly how he’d expected things to go since the Bull had given him the word ‘katoh’ and he could take it. It was the price for the way the Inquisition’s people were less afraid and despising of him, for how well the Bull treated him normally.  
  
Or how well he treated Dorian _before_. Time would tell, if this was going to be something that the Bull was going to expect on a normal night. He’d put an end to it, if it was. Probably. Maybe.  
  
It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t like his cock wasn’t hard, or that there was nothing that he enjoyed going on, or he was completely uncomfortable. He could manage this.  
  
He was managing it, until the Bull thrust in particularly hard, and biting down on his lip turned into biting _through_ his lip. The tang of blood just happened to coincide with the Bull saying “That’s it, stop fighting. You’ll thank me later, when I’ve fixed you into a proper saarebas.”  
  
His father never actually got as far as performing the blood ritual. Dorian left before the preparations were even underway. That had not stopped him from imagining it, had not stopped the less virtuous denizens of the Fade from conjuring vivid nightmares of the ritual to torment him with, and certainly did not stop him from losing it completely now.  
  
He started sobbing, thrashing, sparks dancing from his fingers, even though he couldn’t do much when he was bound like this, “No no no, please no, _I don’t need to be fixed._ ”  
  
The Bull froze.  
  
“What’s the word, Dorian?” he asked.  
  
“Katoh,” he gasped. He wondered again, wildly, what it meant, that the Bull wanted him to say it so badly. He would have said it if the Bull had just _asked_. He didn’t have to do this to Dorian. He would have said it before. “Katoh, katoh, katoh, kat-”  
  
The Bull pulled out, and with a few tugs the knots on the ropes binding Dorian fell away. Just like that, it was over.

* * *

 

“You stopped,” Dorian kept saying, over and over again. “You actually stopped.”  
  
The Bull would normally feel insulted by that, but he’d clearly tripped a hard limit or six and not even noticed. Dorian did not look his best right now, with an ashen sheen to his skin, kohl-stained tear tracks running down his cheeks, and blood welling up from the cut on his lip. He was barely responding to his questions, just staring at the Bull as though he’d never seen a qunari before.  
  
How the shit he’d managed to fuck up so badly without realizing… he wondered, uneasily, if this was a sign of madness, of turning into the kind of rabid Tal-Vashoth he’d hated so much on Seheron. He wondered if he was losing his touch, if he hadn’t noticed that Dorian apparently didn’t trust him to respect his watchword, let alone that he wasn’t enjoying himself.  
  
“I said it and you stopped,” Dorian said uncomprehendingly.  
  
“Yes, I did,” the Bull confirmed. “Is it alright if I try to wipe you down a little?”  
  
Dorian made a tiny, frenzied bobbling motion with his head that the Bull hesitantly decided to take as affirmation. He moved slowly and deliberately, watching Dorian intently for any signs of discomfort.  
  
Before he could make contact, Dorian’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. The Bull froze.  
  
“Bull,” Dorian said, sounding like he was going to relate a great truth from Koslun himself. “No one’s ever stopped before. It’s a trick, to get you to try something you won’t like- you don’t get a way out, once it’s started. No one actually stops.”  
  
To be fair, that was… really important information.  
  
“I stopped,” the Bull reminded him. “And I always will, Dorian, I promise.”  
  
Dorian looked for a moment like he was going to start to cry again, and then he flung himself forward, his arms looped around the Bull’s neck and his face buried in his collar bone. The Bull flicked the wet washcloth away and held him close.

* * *

 

“The first time I was told about watchwords, I was asked to say ‘haere’ if I wanted to stop,” Dorian said some time later. He was standing, wringing out the washcloth over the water basin, which was newly steaming after he’d heated it with a blast of magic. His back was to the Bull, who was still on the bed.  
  
He sounded better, which was probably mostly an act. Still, the Bull could appreciate the need for a little veneer of dignity, and let him have it.  
  
“Isn’t that-” the Bull began.  
  
“The Tevene word for ‘master’?” Dorian finished dryly. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. You can imagine how it sounded when I tried to get him to stop.”  
  
The Bull could picture it too well: a younger Dorian, pleading with some faceless man, while the man in question got off on having a magister’s son calling him master in an effort to get him to stop hurting him.  
  
“None of the others were quite so creative about it,” Dorian continued. “Their excuses tended towards ‘you seemed to be enjoying yourself’ or ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t understand what you were saying’. That one might have even been true- I was a bit muffled at the time. It’s hard to properly enunciate with your smalls in your mouth, after all.”  
  
Under pretty much any other circumstances, that would be a pretty tempting mental image. As it was the Bull felt slightly ill.  
  
“Eventually I stopped believing it. The whole idea that I might end up being seriously hurt and not be able to get away just became another risk to factor into my liaisons, along with blackmail, social censure, and exposure,” Dorian shrugged. “It happens. Or, at least, it happens in Tevinter.”  
  
He turned back to the Bull with wry little smile. “I do try to remember that I’m not living in Tevinter any longer on occasion, believe or not. Sometimes I even succeed. This was not one of those times.”  
  
That was a lot closer to Dorian apologizing for the way his being terrified and in pain ruined the mood for the Bull than he really ever wanted to hear. What he wanted to hear and to say was… something that would probably spook Dorian pretty badly on a good day.

This wasn't what he'd call a good day.  
  
“So… watchwords,” he said instead.  
  
“Yes, if I say ‘katoh’ you’ll stop, no questions asked,” Dorian replied indulgently, offering him the still warm washcloth. “I’ll remember to believe you, next time.”  
  
The Bull took it and started to clean the worst of the mess off of himself. “Yeah. Do you want to pick a word for when you need things to slow down but don’t want to stop, or shall I?”  
  
“Erm,” Dorian said. Clearly, they never did that in Tevinter, or if they did, it wasn’t widespread enough for Dorian to have come across it. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. At least he didn’t have a history of people using it to walk all over him? “Well. ‘Stop’ and its variations was working well enough before tonight.”  
  
“I’m going to go with ‘issa’,” the Bull told him, with a twinge of guilt as he remembered that it wasn’t unusual for Dorian to need a couple of minutes of respite when they played rough. Dorian rolled his eyes, very much like he did the first time they had this conversation, and looked down at the newly-knitted blanket Sera had made for them. “Hey,” he said, and Dorian looked back up at him. “Look, you say ‘issa’, and I’ll slow down until you say ‘eva’, understand?”  
  
“Yes, I understand: ‘katoh’ to stop, ‘issa’ to slow down, and ‘eva’ to get you to just fuck me already,” Dorian told him, barely suppressing another eye roll.

The Bull let it slide for now. He had a feeling they were going to have to have this conversation a lot. “And maybe we should establish a check question for any role-playing we might do later?”  
  
“A check question?”  
  
“Yeah,” the Bull said. “I ask a question during the scene, and any answer that isn’t ‘yes ser’ or doesn’t contain a variation on the work ‘fuck’ means ‘I’m not okay, let’s stop’. Same function as ‘katoh’, but the idea is to make sure you aren’t getting too caught up in the spirit of things.”  
  
Dorian opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything.  
  
“It’ll help me too,” the Bull admitted. “I like being in control, but I’m not in control if I’m hurting you. _Really_ hurting you, not just turning your ass a pretty pink color.”  
  
“I- um,” Dorian replied, sitting down shakily one the bed.  
  
“We don’t have to decide anything tonight,” the Bull said, reaching out to lay an arm across Dorian’s shoulder. Dorian sagged against him. “I don’t think I could get it up again anyway. That was not fun.”  
  
“No, no it very much was not,” Dorian agreed, with a distasteful look over at his clothes.  
  
“You staying the night?” the Bull asked.  
  
“If you insist,” Dorian said.  
  
The Bull did not insist, but he did press a kiss to Dorian’s forehead when he leaned forwards to chuck the washcloth back into the basin, and when he laid back down on the bed, Dorian laid with him, fitting against his side like he belonged there.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [kinkmeme prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13890.html?thread=56077634#t56077634): 
> 
> "When Bull first brings up watchwords, Dorian just rolls his eyes and sort of laughs about it. He doesn't seem to take it seriously. Bull should have put a stop to things right there, but Dorian assures him he's done this sort of play before. Bull chalks it up to trying to appear tough and goes ahead, despite his misgivings. At first, the sex is great. Dorian seems up for anything, never uses his watchword. But then one night Bull does something Dorian clearly doesn't like, and still he doesn't use his watchword.
> 
> When Bull digs a little deeper, he learns that Dorian's previous partners did not listen when Dorian said his watchword. The mage has come to think of the "watchword speech" as just a ploy used by some men to placate and cajole their partners into doing something by offering them a way out when they get uncomfortable, when really there is no way out once you've said "yes"."


End file.
